13
I turned on the light. Elias sat upright against the headboard. His breath was labored, his hair drenched with sweat. All of a sudden I was wide awake.
“What’s going on?”
“Cramps,” he said.
“In your leg?”
“Yes.”
He shivered. Arms, legs, hands. The teeth, too, chattered. Pearls of sweat gathered on his upper lip. I opened the bandage. The leg didn’t look noticeably swollen, but the wound was red around the edges and pus-filled in the center.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I don’t want to go back to the hospital. Let’s wait until tomorrow.”
“No.”
“It’s only cramps. That happens. Tomorrow we’ll go back. I’m sure they couldn’t do much in the ER now anyway. I might just as well stay here. Get me some water, please.”
I went into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. Up to the brim. Then I washed my hands, took two clean towels and poured cold water over one and boiling hot water over the other. Back in the bedroom, I tried to appear calm, to smile at Elias, but I didn’t succeed. I placed the cold compress on Elias’s forehead, and then with the disinfected towel went on to dab the pus from the wound. As soon as I touched the wound Elias screamed, jerked up, back bent, and then fell back with a groan. I dialed the number for the ambulance and wiped Elias’s face with the wet towel. The windows of the house across the street slowly lit up, one by one.
His entire body was shivering. I tried holding on to him, hugged him, but one cramp chased the other in increasingly short intervals. The wound dripped. I lay down next to him. Elias hit the headboard full force, cursed and whimpered. An eternity passed before I heard the siren in front of our house. From the window I yelled down the floor number and begged them to hurry up. Finally I heard the heavy steps of the emergency doctor and the paramedic on the stairs. I led them into the bedroom, where Elias was writhing in the sheets. I rattled off Elias’s medical history. The doctor nodded and put on white rubber gloves.
“Calm down,” he said to me while taking Elias’s pulse and patting down the wound. Elias screamed in agony. I tried to soothe him, put my hand in his. Nothing worked. The doctor took a syringe from his case and gave Elias the injection. Then he continued the examination. He studied the wound pensively and started patting it again.
Elias broke out in a cold sweat. “Stop!” he yelled. His hand clawed into mine and he turned his head away. At first I assumed he didn’t want to watch, but it turned out to be a cramp in his neck. For a couple of minutes, Elias convulsed in pain, hardly able to breathe.
“How long has there been pus in the wound?” the physician asked.
“Maybe a couple of hours. I don’t know. I slept through it. Can’t you give him something?”
“I already did.”
When the seizure ended, the doctor gave the paramedic a signal. Without a word the paramedic went down to the ambulance and a few minutes later came back with another colleague and a stretcher. Elias had calmed down a bit. His groans were quieter and he could breathe again. The neighbors peered out of their windows curiously.
As soon as we arrived at the hospital a nurse asked me when Elias had last eaten.